From the Mainichi Daily News:
Under the National Diet Library Act, publishers must send copies of all printed books to the library. However, texts published only on the Internet remain outside the law and, save those collected from government ministries and agencies’ websites, un-catalogued by the library. The National Diet Library — similar to the Library of Congress in the United States — plans to start collecting electronic materials as early as fiscal 2011.
A consultative body put together by the head librarian and composed of scholars and publishing industry figures submitted a report on the collection of e-books in June. The report concluded that with the e-book market swelling to 46.4 billion yen as of 2008, “If online materials cannot be collected, there is a real risk the library will not be able to fulfill its purpose of ‘accumulating cultural assets and providing them for use’ as set out under the law.”
The report further named e-books and “mobile novels” — novels written to be read on mobile phones — among others as appropriate targets for collection. The report’s recommendations are now under review by the library administration, but mandatory submission to the library seems likely to be limited to commercially-released e-books and research papers released by both universities and private institutions. This would be a narrower focus than the one suggested by the report, but the library’s acquisitions section says it could “start with a limited scope, and then expand the types of material collected by degrees.”
More in the article.
